Consider whether one of the following versions of skepticism is true. You may use the accompanying arguments if you wish, both of which were discussed at length in class.
Pyrrhonian (general) skepticism: We cannot have knowledge about reality.
Empirical skepticism: We cannot have knowledge about the world.
Argument for General Skepticism
1. Knowledge entails reflective possession of evidence guaranteeing truth.
2. Evidence guaranteeing truth of something must be comprehensive.
3. Comprehensive evidence is an infinite amount of evidence.
4. We cannot have reflective possession of an infinite amount of evidence.
C. We cannot have knowledge.
Argument for empirical skepticism.
1. The only propositions we can know are ones that rely entirely on empirical claims.
2. No proposition about the world relies entirely on empirical claims.
C.We cannot have knowledge about the world.
An empirical claim is a claim whose terms have meanings derived entirely from sensory experience.
The world is the reality underlying our experience.
Propositions about the world rely on several non-empirical claims, i.e. claims that simply cannot be reduced to or or justified by sensory evidence, such as the following:
i. My sensory representations are caused by real things which are similar to them. ( I have to way to check it - that is, if representationalism - an axiom of empiricism - is true.
ii. Induction of general propositions from incomplete observation - the cornerstone of scientific discovery - is a trustworthy form of inference. (Induction is based on our confidence that the laws of the world, whatever they are, are unchanging in time and space. This confidence cannot be empirically justified without circular reasoning: I inductively conclude, based on my experience, that the laws of nature are unchanging. But I have to be convinced of this before I entrust myself to inductive inference.
The following may be of interest.
The real question is whether we can say the following:
A true proposition is one that corresponds with reality. A proposition that corresponds with reality will also turn out (in the end) to be perfectly coherent, and nothing else but true propositions will be perfectly coherent.
Is that true?
If truth is correspondence of a judgment with reality and it must be (in the final analysis) perfectly coherent, the assumption is that reality itself is perfectly coherent. Is that true? What would someone who thinks reality is nothing other than our experience have to say about this? I would not say that my experience is always coherent.
It is difficult to talk about truth, but in light of the crazy things that one hears said of it, I think it is an important topic.
Put yourself in the investigator]'s situation and explore the issue from that standpoint. What are the "markers" of a true account, as opposed to a false account? Do all truths eventually connect into one all-embracing explanation? Is the truth in a sense eternal?
Does our ability to be truth-searchers make us different from the other animals, or is our "truth-searching" really just another kind of animal
survival activity?